Dubai is an incredible city! And it’s hard to believe, but it’s a relatively young city. Sixty years ago the Emirates was mostly just desert with only ~150K people. Now it’s a bustling area booming with over 10 million people, one-third of whom are in Dubai. If you look at before and after photos of the city it’s hard to believe it’s the same location. And yet it is.

When it comes to larger-than-life achievements, Dubai takes the lead. Not only was the city seemingly built overnight, but this vibrant city supposedly holds more than 300+ world records. Our tour guide basically said that Dubai wants to be the tallest, fastest, biggest, largest, etc. for practically everything. The most famous of these is probably  Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building at 163 floors. We didn’t even pretend like we were going to go up in the tower, but according to some fellow ship guests it was a hefty price tag just to go halfway up (like over $100 – no thank you). We were happy just seeing it in the skyline and driving past it.

Another larger-than-life fixture in Dubai is the Dubai Frame, the world’s largest frame, which was hard to miss as it is just that – a super big frame that doesn’t seem to actually ‘frame’ anything.

They also have Dubai Mall, the largest shopping mall, which we did actually go to (huge aquarium inside of it and a lot of over-priced stores with over-priced goods). We could have wandered for hours inside the mall without retracing our steps. We’re not big shoppers though so we limited our time to a more manageable 90 minutes or so.

We also went for a photo stop at Burj Al Arab hotel, the tallest in-suite hotel in the world. The hotel is also notable because it looks like a giant sail and is a whopping 7 stars – meaning the rooms are crazy expensive and somewhere I’ll likely never stay.

Another place we saw – at least from the outside – several times was the Museum of the Future. You can’t miss it. The building is a unique shape with quotes of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum rendered in the calligraphy of Mattar bin Lahej on the outside. According to the museum’s website, “the circular building represents humanity; the green mound it sits atop represents the earth; the void represents the unknown future.”

While we didn’t visit the Museum of the Future, we did visit the Dubai Museum for a deeper look at the local history, especially the years before oil was discovered in the emirate in 1966. The museum was fairly standard, though the video we watched was well done and wrapped around the walls of the theater which made it a little more immersive than it would have been otherwise.

Another stop we made was to the posh Jumeirah residential district, where we were able to snap pictures of the modern Jumeirah Mosque. It was an impressive mosque that reminded us a little of a giant sand castle in its coloring and design.

We also walked to the Al Fahid historical neighborhood. Built long before air conditioning, this area features ochre-colored architecture that wind towers cool.

We wandered a little while before finding an ice cream stand outside the area that sold camel-milk ice cream! It turns out that camel milk is lower in fat and calories than cow milk, and it also contains more vitamins and minerals. Additionally, camel milk is a good source of iron and vitamin C. It also contains a higher concentration of antibodies than cow milk, which means it can help boost your immune system. And even better (for me) is that it has less lactose than cow’s milk. So I say we were actually healthy by eating camel milk ice cream. More important than any of this though is that it was absolutely delicious. We had pistachio ice cream and it was the creamiest ice cream I’ve had in ages. Truly incredible. I wish we had remembered to take a photo of the ice cream, but alas we didn’t.

One of the things that you notice right away about Dubai is the splicing of new and old. You see camels and Ferraris. You see high rises and old-time souks. It’s impressive to see the interspersion of buildings, many new and amazing (as I already noted) but some more conservative and reminiscent of older times. As part of our excursion on the first day we rode a traditional water taxi known as an abra across Dubai Creek. It was an unassuming ride across the water.

A short walk then brought us to two souks – one full of aromatic spices sold from open sacks and the other devoted to gold.

Technically, there were several souks. As the signs below show, there was also a utensils souk along with the gold and herbs souks. Or, as the spell it, souq.

While in the souks, we stopped into a shop where the shop owner fitted Ryan with a traditional headpiece, ready for an adventure in the desert.

We also tried some local spices, including some teas with saffron added to them. They were actually quite tasty, and the guy noted they helped with a lot of ailments, from heart problems to digestive ailments to issues in the bedsheets. Ryan raised his eyebrows at the last one…

Those who know us will understand our excitement on this next thing… we found Diet Pepsi at the souk! We haven’t had Diet Pepsi since we were in Hawaii so Ryan and I each got one and savored them on our way back to the ship!

After a day touring around Dubai and seeing the sights, we had our world event (the events for the around-the-world cruisers) at an amazing location in the desert. It took ~40 minutes to get there, which wasn’t bad because the sights of the city as we drove away were impressive. Check out the Burj Khalifa in the pic below!

The event itself was incredible. Ryan chose not to join on this event, which was too bad because I’d say it was the best one we’ve had so far. The event was held at the Al Sahara Desert Fortress.

The food was tasty (a buffet style spread) and the entertainment was lively. There were fire breathers, a belly dancer, and other traditional dancers (a Tanoura dance and Dabke show) who wowed the audience. They also had a set-up where you could get a henna tattoo if you wanted. At one point, there was a fireworks show that would put Disney to shame. As it turns out, the fireworks weren’t actually part of our event and instead were for a separate gig near us. But it’s hard to keep a show that big to yourself in the desert so we got to benefit from it. It was spectacular.

Overall, our time in Dubai was certainly memorable. Two days of exploring the area and being impressed time and again. It’s definitely a city where you need a lot of money to live – or even to visit based on the high prices of everything. But it’s also definitely a city that is worth a visit to see what all the hype is about.